September 12, 2013. At the 2013 International Test Conference, GOEPEL electronic introduced an Automatic Application Program Generator (AAPG) for design validation and test of FPGA integrated high-speed I/O (HSIO) based on the ChipVORX technology for FPGA Embedded Instruments. Users can now evaluate transmission channel quality by utilizing bit error rate tests (BERT). This provides a graphical evaluation per dynamic eye diagram to support design validation.
“The development towards FPGA based board designs is also accompanied by more and more high-speed I/O, difficult to test by traditional metrology due to continuously decreasing physical access. Our new solution addresses this very problem”, said Heiko Ehrenberg, technology officer for Embedded System Access for GOEPEL electronics in the USA. “Because of high automation level, the high-speed I/O’s FPGA parameters can be interactively defined and become immediately effective without design synthesis—that is, users can directly validate the influence on transfer quality. Furthermore, signals received in the silicon are recorded and visualized, which enables unaltered measurement results.”
The new generator is another option in the integrated SYSTEM CASCON JTAG/boundary-scan software platform, enabling automatic generation of complete application scripts for FPGA embedded HSIO test instruments. These are chip-dependent instrument selections, established within an FPGA, addressing, configuration, procedural control, qualification of generated data, and graphical eye visualization.
The AAPG connects ChipVORX model integrated instrument information with the intrasystem data base for structural and functional UUT (unit under test) description and protocol-specific user guidelines for configuration of the target FPGA’s high-speed I/O channels. The fully automatically generated script is based on the SYSTEM CASCON integrated standard language CASLAN (CAScon LANguage) and can be executed on each run-time station without additional options. Gang applications are also supported.
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